Barclays

Translation: the Fed is not data dependent, but it is, as we have said all along, entirely market dependent.

"It is an old saying in commodities that the best cure for low prices is low prices. Market participants are now asking how much further prices need to fall and how long they need to stay there to bring supply and demand back in to balance and halt the price declines across a broad swathe of different raw materials markets. The fear is that just as the upside of the supercycle brought an unprecedented and long period of historical price highs, the plunge to the downside is shaping up to be equally dramatic and may yet have a way to run."

Over the weeks, months, and years ahead we’ll begin to understand more about the fallout from the death of the petrodollar and nowhere is it likely to be more apparent than in Saudi Arabia where widening fiscal and current account deficits have forced the Saudis to tap the bond market to mitigate the FX drawdown that's fueling speculation about the viability of the dollar peg. As Bloomberg reports, the current situation mirrors a "very scary moment" in Saudi Arabia’s history.

Last week, in the global currency war’s latest escalation, Kazakhstan instituted a free float for the tenge causing the currency to immediately plunge by some 25%. The rationale behind the move was clear enough. What might not be as clear is how recent events in developing economy FX markets stem from a seismic shift we began discussing late last year - namely, the death of the petrodollar system which has served to underwrite decades of dollar dominance and was, until recently, a fixture of the post-war global economic order.

Well, we have a winner - Oil broke to a 3 handle before 10Y rates hit a 1 handle (just - 10Y at 2.04%) following the 5th weekly rise in rig count (+2 to 674). Energy credit risk is soaring to record highs as investors realize 'there will be blood' in all those highly-levered loans.  This is the first time the front-month crude contract traded below $40 since March 3rd 2009... just before QE was unleashed in all its asset-inflating, malinvestment-driving, zombifying glory.

Even before the latest shot across the bow in the escalating global currency wars, EM FX was beset by falling commodity prices, stumbling Chinese demand, and a looming Fed hike. And while, as Barclays notes, "estimating the global effects China has via the exchange rate and growth remains a rough exercise," more than a few observers believe the effect may be to spark a Asian Financial Crisis redux. For their part, BofAML has endeavored to compare last week’s move to the 1994 renminbi devaluation, on the way to drawing comparisons between what happened in 1997 and what may unfold in the months ahead.

If there was any confusion as to whether the recently devalued Chinese yuan would be landing in the IMF SDR basket on January 1, the Fund just cleared it up.

• $1 trillion in Emerging Market outflows in the past 13 months (FT)
• German lawmakers back third Greek bailout (Reuters)
• Dutch government faces test in "junkie" Greece debate (Reuters)
• China c.bank offers selected banks medium term lending facility (Reuters)
• Another "expert network" busted: Promontory settles over StanChart probe (FT)
• Angola to Ship Most Crude in Four Years to Meet Asian Demand (BBG)
• Hackers dump data online from cheating website Ashley Madison (Reuters)
• Yuan’s Devaluation Brings Losses for Some (WSJ)

"The Goldman blowback is a particularly challenging subject to understand and analyze. Taken to extremes, criticism of the firm, which was founded and built by Jewish Americans, smacks at times of anti-Semitism. Fed officials don’t want to fall into the trap of ostracizing qualified people merely because of their association with the firm or its Jewish roots."

- John Hilsenrath

On Monday we laid out the rather dire road ahead for the world’s emerging economies in the face of China’s entry into the global currency wars. The path ahead is riddled with exported deflation and decreased trade competitiveness for a whole host of emerging economies [and] all of this is set against a backdrop of declining global growth and trade, a trend which many had assumed was merely cyclical, but which in fact may prove to be structural and endemic." Well don’t look now, but trade just collapsed for Indonesia as exports and imports plunged 19.2% and 28.4% (more than double to consensus estimate), respectively in July. Meanwhile, the rupiah is sitting near multi-decade lows.

"He’s now saying 'I won’t listen to the laws or constitution.' This is a very dangerous period. He wants to give a legal foundation to this coup he’s carried out. Those who carry out coups always do this: First they carry out the coup, then they give it a legal foundation.'"

It is what happened in investment grade fund flows in the latest week that is making CEO, especially those whose compensation is a direct function of how much stock they repurchase, very nervous because as Lipper reported overnight IG funds just saw $1.8 billion in outflows, the most in over two years or since June 2013. And without the fund inflow train into IG funds operating smoothly, suddenly stock buybacks appear in jeopardy...

It appears efforts to form a coalition has failed as local nes report both the AKP and CHP will make separate statements from their party HQs.

"[The] devaluation of the yuan risks a new round of competitive easing that may send currencies from Brazil's real to Indonesia's rupiah tumbling by an average 30 percent to 50 percent in the next nine months, according to investor and former International Monetary Fund economist Stephen Jen."

The WSJ reported that none other than the operator of the biggest dark pool in the US by volume, Credit Suisse and its massive Crossfinder dark pool, "is in talks with regulators to settle allegations of wrongdoing at its “dark pool” with a record fine in the high tens of millions of dollars, according to people familiar with the matter." What is grotesque about this story, is that back in December 2012, it was none other than Credit Suisse which conveniently explained and laid out all those forms of HFT manipulation which we accused virtually every HFT firm of employing since 2009... and which Credit Suisse itself is now accused of engaging in!